​ September 30, 2020

​ 3 Comments

Rethink your
language goals: 3
language learning
goal mistakes and
how to set better
goals

There's so much info out there!

There’s so much language learning content online. Who should you listen to?

Whose example do you follow? Does not performing as well as people you see

online mean you’re a bad language learner? Absolutely not.

Because of the huge amounts of content we see every day related to language

learning, we need to take time to sift through it. We have to realise everyone is
individual and different, and our language learning goals should be personalised

as well.

That being said, there are some common mistakes that language learners make

when trying to set language learning goals.

3 common language
goal-setting mistakes
1. Setting unmeasurable, lofty goals.

2. Looking at someone else’s years of progress and thinking that you are far

behind.

3. Having the same learning approach for every single language.

Imagine this...
Picture this. It’s the 1st of January and you are looking at all the languages you

have on your list. You are setting goals. They might sound like this:

– become fluent in Japanese

– finally be able to have that conversation in Spanish

– read 15 articles of French

… now that the year is drawing to a close, you look back and think… “what does

it look like to be fluent in a language?” or “how does reading 15 articles contribute

to my language learning journey?” or “How do I actually measure my goals?”.

Mistake 1: Unmeasurable
goals
One of the biggest mistakes we make as language learners is setting

unmeasurable and lofty language learning goals.

The concept of fluency is very hard to define. I’ve talked about fluency in two

videos which you can check out here.

Essentially, everybody has a different concept of fluency. I consider it a waste of

time when we try to figure out what fluency is and chase towards this

unattainable dream. Setting a goal to become fluent in a language is not an

actionable path you can follow. It’s an aspiration. It’s a result of hard work. An

end, not a means to an end.

What you need to succeed in your language learning journey is to set goals that

you can track. Goals that are measurable.

Don’t worry! I’m still learning too. I’m guilty. On my Twitter profile, I track my

language learning progress. I pinned a tweet with some of my language goals at

the beginning of the year, and I realised over time that these goals have

changed.
 2020 lang goals

한국어능력시험4급 합격하기

日本語能力試験N2合格

Get comfy speaking again, read more French articles

B1 in Hungarian, read & understand most of 1 article

30min convo in Viet

Learn to read and write, reach A1

Refresh reading & writing, reach A2

— Lindie Botes | 린디 • 琳迪 • リンコ (@lindiebee)January 2, 2020

I am now treating goals like a guideline and not a set rule. My goals are like a

framework for me to move in. But of course, there are some goals I made like
“Reach level B2”. Looking back, that was a wrong way to approach language

learning.

I remember Steve Kaufman at the Polyglot Conference 2019 saying that fluency

can be seen as something like “what was I able to say before and what am I able

to say now?”. That’s a really good way to measure your progress.

You can measure your progress towards fluency by keeping a language learning

journal, either in a book or via a video diary. If you look back a few months, you

might notice, “oh I was only able to talk about these basic topics, and now I can

do so much more!”. This helps you see your progress in a visual way, and is

better than having a wishy-washy goal of “becoming fluent”.

Mistake 2: Comparison
Another mistake that language learners make is to look at somebody who’s been

studying a language for 10 or 15 years and say, “this is where I need to be right

now”. If we do that, we feel inadequate.

Language learning is a lifelong journey. It truly takes a long time to become fluent

in any language. It won’t be easy. You might see some polyglots on YouTube with

videos titled “how I learnt [insert language] in a week”. Sure, you can learn a

language from zero to some extent, but you’d only be able to say basic phrases.

That doesn’t mean you’re fluent in a week.

Yet what people do is to look at these polyglots online and use this as a base or

the guideline of where they need to be at. You don’t see the hard work and time

that it takes to be able to learn a language to an advanced level. The mistake

that we make is that we look at somebody who is on page 100 of their journey

and we look at our page 1 and think that we are inadequate. That is not the right

mindset to have when learning language!

Mistake 3: The same approach
for each language
Finally, having the same approach for each language is something that I found

never to work.

Because each language is different in terms of grammar and vocabulary, the

approach you take to learning each language should be different.

For example, if you’re learning Mandarin Chinese, you have to spend a

significant time memorising and learning Chinese characters. You won’t need to
learn a new writing system if you do Spanish or French — just different

pronunciation.

If you are learning French and you know how to conjugate verbs, and you take

that same thinking and apply it to Mandarin Chinese, you’re not going to get any

verbs to conjugate! You’re gonna get a whole bunch of unfamiliar characters.

Obviously, these two languages need to be approached very differently.

Change your way of thinking to be suited to the language you are learning now.

The more languages you learn, the easier it gets to pick up language learning

methods that work for you.

Language learning is not a race. We are not competing against each other. We

are humans and we only have so much time in the day and so many months in

the year. Take it slow! Look at the languages you want to learn, create specific

goals that you can measure and track, and take it from there.

Relax and enjoy the process!